


Time in our Hands

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, AU, Adventure, F/M, Golden Lace, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-07-12 07:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19942765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Temporal Detective First Class Aiden Gold has been working tirelessly to keep the timeline unaltered for as long as he can remember. He’s been chasing time bandit Lacey French for almost as long, but she always seems to slip through his fingers.Until the day when his commanding officer tells him to bring Lacey in at all costs. The world itself is under threat, and Gold will need Lacey’s expertise to make sure that history happens as it should, and to prevent a catastrophe in the future…Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling moodboard prompt, availablehere





	1. Chapter 1

It was a truth universally acknowledged that ever since time started moving in a nice, linear, forwards direction, people had been attempting to meddle with it in various ways, and ever since people started meddling with time, the powers that be had been trying to stop them meddling with time in order to prevent unknown catastrophes. 

No one was ever quite sure when the Bureau of Temporal Investigation was founded, because its agents performed so much time travel of their own that they could be said to exist in all places in all times. Most people thought that it was better not to think too deeply about the Bureau and its agents and where they came from, and where they were going to. Indeed, most people who were content to live life in a nice, linear, forwards direction without any trips to the past or the future never even knew that the Bureau existed. 

The only people who were definitely sure that the Bureau of Temporal Investigation existed were the people who worked for it and the people who did things that attracted its attention. 

There were some people who decided that the past was a far nicer place than the present and attempted to stay there. 

There were some people who decided that they wanted to get to the future a little quicker than everyone else and in doing so managed to change the course of history. How one person taking a jaunt to 2023 to see what new ice cream flavours had been invented could cause chaos during the reign of Elizabeth I was a mystery, especially to the long-suffering Bureau, who worked on the principle that they weren’t paid to work out why these things happened, they were paid to stop them from happening in the first place.

In addition to those two groups, there were some people who decided that the past was an extremely lucrative hunting ground for genuine historical artefacts that could then be brought forward in time in pristine condition and sold to the highest bidder. 

These people were known as time bandits, and these were the people with whom Temporal Detective First Class Aiden Gold was concerned.

He was concerned with one of them in particular, which was why he was currently charging around 320 BCE Athens in hot (very hot, he was dripping with sweat and felt like his lungs were about to explode) pursuit of one of the most infamous thieves of the entire unedited timeline. 

When Gold had received news that Lacey French was on the move again and had been commissioned back to late classical Greece to steal a particularly famous specimen of statuary from the time of its creation, he had been tempted just to let her steal it. Gold had been trying to catch Lacey for as long as he could remember, and, somehow, she always managed to slip through his fingers with a cheery wave as she activated her personal transport band and vanished off to times and places unknown. It was getting to the stage where his superiors had almost accepted that she was never going to be caught, and several of his colleagues shook their heads in despair when they saw him rush off to the travel capsules when she surfaced again. 

Jefferson, with whom Gold had shared a desk for several years, had mooted the idea that Gold didn’t actually want to catch Lacey, and that he enjoyed the game of cat and mouse and letting her get away. Although he always said it with a twinkle in his eye and an expression that was very much encouraging Gold to go for it with his merry-making time bandit, such exchanges usually ended with Gold throwing a holepunch in Jefferson’s direction and Jefferson dodging it. 

He couldn’t deny that Lacey was a very interesting character, and if she hadn’t been the bane of his existence for his entire time at the Bureau, he may indeed have found her attractive. 

Yes, he had been tempted just to let her alone this time. Maybe that would put paid to some of Jefferson’s teasing, and after all, there were some more pressing thefts to investigate. This time, Lacey would be unimpeded in her mission - not that Gold ever managed to impede her very much; she had the uncanny knack of knowing just how to get around all of his tactics. 

Unfortunately, Gold’s resolve to leave her alone this once went by the wayside once Captain Mallory had called in, whilst he was finishing up a reconnaissance mission in 19th century France, no less, and told him in no uncertain terms that they needed Lacey French at HQ right now and under no circumstances was he to come back empty-handed. The urgency in the captain’s voice perturbed Gold. Lacey was a petty criminal; they had far bigger, shadier figures to worry about; gangsters running entire time bandit rings that stretched back throughout history, far more dangerous people than Lacey, who worked alone and had never fallen in with a big crowd. 

The choice of wording was interesting too, and even now, panting through the streets of Athens and attracting far more attention than any good temporal detective should, Gold couldn’t get one particular word out of his head. 

They _needed_ Lacey. 

He could see her up ahead, the small statue sticking out of her bag. She was standing in the middle of the street at the top of a hill, her dark auburn hair blowing in the light summer breeze, almost as if she was waiting for him, and Gold knew that now was not the time to be thinking about the way her chiton draped over her curves. 

He shook the thought away and kept powering on up the hill towards her, looking for the tell-tale moment when she would touch the bracelet on her wrist and the holographic glamour around it would fall away, revealing not a bracelet but a personal temporal transportation device. He didn’t even know why he bothered, really. She always let him think that he had the upper hand and then just slithered away with moments to spare. She’d turned it into an art form over the many years he had been chasing her. 

This time, however, she was showing no signs of moving. She was just standing there, letting him come to her. She was either playing a risky game of chicken and letting him get closer than ever before, or she was genuinely letting him catch her. 

When he actually got close enough to touch her arm and prevent her transporting, Gold thought that he was dreaming, and for a few moments, he couldn’t speak. He tried to put this down to the fact that he’d just run up a hill in the blazing Mediterranean midday sun, but both he and Lacey knew better. She just looked at his hand on her arm with amusement, and when her eyes met his, she had a sneaky little smile on her face. 

“Well done, Detective,” she said, deadpan. “You’ve caught me at last.”

She’d let him catch her: it was the only explanation. He just didn’t know why. Still, he couldn’t afford to let her slip out of his grasp now that he’d finally got his hands on her, and once he’d got his breath back, he gave her the standard caution and clasped the time-lock cuff around her wrist above her transporter; the holographic glamour shimmered into place and it became just another bracelet. That would lock her in time, overriding any attempts to travel away from this fixed point until they were back in the capsule. 

Lacey just watched him with amusement. 

“You were really quite desperate to catch up with me,” she said. “I’ve never seen you so determined before. When I saw that you were going to tackle the hill, I knew it must be serious.” Gold just rolled his eyes, a hand on her shoulder guiding her back down the hill towards the side street where his transport capsule was hidden away, disguised as a recalcitrant cow. (Gold was particularly pleased with the hologram work on this one; the cow even mooed.)

At least that explained why she’d let him catch up with her. Whatever Captain Mallory needed Lacey for, it was urgent and serious, and perhaps Lacey herself knew what it was and finally comprehended the gravity of her actions. Still, Gold didn’t want to let on that he himself had no idea why she was so desperately required back at HQ, so he decided that remaining silent was the best way forward. 

He was not impressed when they reached the cow and Lacey burst out laughing at his choice of disguise. 

“Really? A cow?”

“It moos!” Gold knew that it wasn’t the best defence of his hologram, but he was damned if he was going to have Lacey laughing at his capsule. 

She looked at him, very obviously trying not to laugh, and pressed a hand over her mouth, turning away as her shoulders shook with silent giggles. 

Gold sighed and touched between the cow’s horns to decloak the capsule and open the door. 

“After you.”

“Why, thank you.”

Everything in the capsule was as he left it, and there were no messages waiting for him. He’d hoped that perhaps the captain would have got back in touch to tell him precisely why they needed Lacey so badly, but it was not to be. Gold sealed the capsule door after him and held out a hand to Lacey, who just stared at him.

He sighed again. “Hand over the bag.”

She made a face. “Do I have to? I was going to make a mint off this statue. I could probably retire off the proceeds and then you’d never have to worry about me again.”

“It’s stolen and soon-to-be-temporally-displaced property, and knowing you, it’s not the only thing you swiped from the temple.”

“Well, you know me, Detective. Always need an eye for the bargains. But come on, you need me. Surely it would be a gesture of goodwill to let me keep this stash.”

“You’re still under arrest, even if the circumstances are somewhat unusual.”

Lacey rolled her eyes before handing over the bag with a scowl. As much as she had made his life difficult over the past months of their acquaintance, Gold couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed at her. 

His suspicions were correct. There were several gold trinkets in the bag along with the statue, and Gold’s practised eye could immediately tell that they were from all over the timeline, not just Ancient Greece. He stowed the whole lot into a locker; the experts back at HQ would have a field day dating all that and getting it restored to its proper time frames. 

Still, a gesture of goodwill was probably in order if they wanted Lacey on their side, and he handed the severely depleted bag back before going over to the capsule controls and typing in a course for home. 

“So,” Lacey was already rummaging in the bag. “When are we headed?”

“The nominal present.”

“And for someone not fluent in time cop speak that is…”

“Twenty-first century.”

“Excellent.” Lacey pulled some clothes out of her bag and Gold turned back to the console with a squawk when it became clear that she had no qualms about changing out of her chiton with an audience. He heard Lacey’s low laugh at his discomfiture and cursed under his breath. Their game of cat and mouse had been going on for so long now that they could almost be said to know each other, but the fact remained that up until this uneasy moment of truce, they had been on opposite sides of that game and Gold was still unwilling to show any kind of weakness towards someone who was perhaps still an opponent. 

He opened a communication channel to the captain, but she was unavailable, so he left a message. 

“Lacey French has been apprehended, bringing her in now.” He wanted to ask for more information as to why her capture had been so imperative, but he would be finding out from the captain herself soon enough. 

With the temporal co-ordinates locked in, Gold went to get changed himself, making sure that all the consoles were locked before leaving Lacey alone with them. Not that he really anticipated her doing anything. She had allowed herself to be taken in, after all, which meant that she must have some interest in seeing where it was all going. 

Whilst it was in no way unusual to see detectives in modes of dress from all over the world and all over the timeline in HQ, Gold was one who always preferred to stick to the conventions of the nominal present, and much preferred a suit to all other possible garments. The desire to appear in his usual aspect before going in for a no-doubt incredibly important meeting with the captain outweighed the desire to take a shower first. Really, Greece was too hot for rampaging around after time bandits. 

Lacey gave him an appreciative onceover as he came back into the control room, feeling the capsule beginning to slow down around them. 

“You always dress up nicely,” she said. “It’s really not the same when you’re blending in with the locals. You just don’t look right without the suit.”

Gold raised an eyebrow, not quite trusting himself not to end up sounding like a complete idiot should he attempt a verbal reply. He couldn’t tell if Lacey was being serious or not, and he was already becoming worryingly discombobulated by her presence. 

The capsule came to a stop, the doors opening with a hiss, and Gold and Lacey stepped out into the Bureau of Temporal Investigation.


	2. Chapter 2

Although Lacey had never intended to see the inside of the BTI headquarters, she couldn’t deny that it was extremely impressive, and all she had seen of it so far was the capsule bay. As she and Gold stepped out of the transporter, a technician ran over with an armful of tubes and cables and began plugging them in all around the door. An amber light began to flash above them, the words _solar recharge_ spelled out in stark black lettering.

Gold had taken off at a brisk pace towards the capsule bay exit, but Lacey hung back a little, wanting to explore a little more and not knowing whether she would get the chance later.

She knew that something was up. It wasn’t just that Gold seemed more determined to catch her than he usually was, because tenacity appeared to be that man’s middle name and whilst she thoroughly enjoyed the game of cat and mouse that she’d been playing with him for years now, she certainly couldn’t afford to become complacent. There had been several near misses in the past, nearer than Lacey would ever like to admit, and she had to be wary. Gold kept her on her toes almost as much as she kept him on his.

No, it wasn’t just Gold that clued her in to something being wrong. Just before she’d set off on the excursion to Greece, her transport bracelet had been acting glitchy. Given the amount of personalisation that had gone into the thing in order to tailor it for her particular brand of work, she knew that whatever was happening, and whenever along the timeline it might be happening, it involved her personal time signature. Something devastating was happening, or had happened, or about to happen, and Lacey was involved in some way. Whether it was in the nominal present, the distant past, or the far future, she didn’t know, but she expected that the time cops, sorry, the _Bureau of Temporal Investigation_ , would tell her soon. Lacey didn’t like glitches. She liked things to go as smoothly as possible.

“We haven’t got all day, Miss French,” Gold snapped from the exit. Lacey took a final look around at the name plates next to each of the capsules. _A. Gold, TD 1 st Class. J. Milliner, TD 1st Class. J. Rogers, TD 2nd Class. Fa M., TD 2nd Class. _

“So, you’ve all got personal capsules then?” she asked, catching up to Gold as they left the capsule bay. It was one of a series of long banks of them, all showing designations for different departments and teams. “Lucky for some.”

Gold shrugged. “We can use any capsule available, but there’s recalibration involved. It’s like driving a car; when you get in someone else’s you have to adjust the seat and the headrest and the mirrors. In your own, that’s already set up.”

“Yeah, well, some of us only have these.” Lacey tapped her bracelet, still rendered null by the time lock cuff. It wasn’t uncomfortably tight on her wrist, but it was nonetheless obnoxiously present, and she knew that she wouldn’t be getting it off in a hurry. She tried not to panic. Ever since beginning her adventures through time, Lacey had never yet been in a situation that she couldn’t wink out of in a moment’s notice, and now she had willingly put herself into one.

They continued to walk through the headquarters, and Lacey was embarrassed to admit to herself just how fascinating she found the experience. There were people dressed in costumes from all over the world and all over the timeline; there didn't seem to be a single nation or era that was not represented. Everyone was bustling here and there and everywhere, and she wondered if they'd arrived in the middle of some kind of catastrophe. No-one seemed to be paying her and Gold any mind, which she thought interesting considering that she'd been wanted by the BTI for years now, and here she was, in a detective's custody.

Gold glanced back at her and gave a little smirk. "Don't worry. Half of these agents are working on the big crime family rings. You're small change in comparison. They probably don't even know your name."

Although by no means convinced of her own fame, Lacey was still a little bit put out to learn that her reputation did not precede her, especially when she'd spent so long building it up.

"You're infamous in my department though," Gold added. He waved her through a doorway marked _Petty Temporal Displacement Investigations. Captain: C. Mallory._

"Well, I suppose that's something." Lacey came through the door. It was clear that this department wasn't as high-flying as the others that they'd walked through to get here. Gold peered around a partition in one corner of the bullpen, and out of curiosity, Lacey followed him. A young woman wearing outlandishly huge goggles was looking through a magnifying glass at something under a microscope. Nothing like getting a close-up. She was humming to herself, and it took Gold several attempts to get her attention.

"Tilly. Tilly!"

She jerked her head up and removed the goggles.

"Mr G, you're back!" She jumped up from her desk and threw her arms around Gold exuberantly. To Lacey's surprise, he accepted the hug without question. When Tilly finally released him, her eyes slid over to Lacey and widened before a huge grin spread over her face.

"Welcome to the Bureau," she said. "We've heard all about you."

Gold just rolled his eyes and handed her the safe that all Lacey's carefully and meticulously stolen loot was in. "There's an Aladdin's Cave of goodies for you and Margot to date and replace in there," he said. "Pick-up date's on the lid."

Tilly rushed back to her desk to get to work, and Lacey really wasn't quite sure what to make of the wink that the other woman gave her.

"Cap's in her office, Aiden," someone called as they came into the main bullpen. "Go straight in."

Gold paused at what was obviously his desk and emptied some detritus out of his suit pockets. Lacey felt a little awkward just hanging around, but at least it gave her time to look around. The man who'd hailed them was giving her an amused look. Apparently Gold hadn't been kidding when he'd talked about her infamy. Eventually he leaned over and held out a hand.

"Jefferson Milliner, Temporal Detective First Class, and may I say that it is an absolute honour to meet the woman who's been driving my esteemed colleague spare for the past few years. It really has been most entertaining to watch, so I must thank you for livening up my days."

He was completely in earnest, and Lacey couldn't tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It felt so strange to be here; she was out of her depth although she'd never dream of letting anyone know that. The technology that the Bureau used, even in Gold's little department here, was so much more advanced than the things she was used to working with. She was trying not to regret the decision to let Gold catch her, telling herself that she needed to find out what the glitch in her transporter was about before she could get back to work. That said, since she had just got herself arrested, she probably wasn't going to be allowed to get back to work any time soon. The one thing that kept her going was the thought that the Bureau needed her. Surely something could be worked out in terms of immunity, and if she was still being dealt with by the petty crimes unit, then it wasn't like her exploits were incredibly serious.

"Jeff, stop it," Gold muttered, before turning to Lacey. "Come on. Time to meet the Captain."

Although Lacey had never usually been scared of law enforcement agents before, she could say without a shadow of a doubt that if she was going to be scared of one of them, it would be Captain Cara Mallory. She was an imposing presence, perfectly at home in her domain, and Lacey received the distinct impression of a dragon watching over its hoard.

"Come in and sit down," she said as Gold and Lacey entered her office, looking up from the paperwork covering every inch of her desk and surveying her detective and his charge sagely.

"Miss French. You've certainly led us a merry dance over the years. I'm glad that you've decided to co-operate with us on this occasion." Despite the severe tone in her words, there was something in the captain's eyes that Lacey could tell was respect. Mallory knew that Lacey had made the choice to be taken in - no offence to Gold's efforts to capture her.

"What's going on, Mal?" Gold asked. Lacey raised an eyebrow. So, he didn't know why he'd had to bring her in any more than she knew why everything had started glitching. He'd played that close to his chest, and she had to hand it to him, she'd never have known that he wasn't entirely sure what was going on. Ever since he'd started chasing her back in Greece, Gold had exuded an air of confidence in his mission, even if it was an exasperated one.

"We have a delicate timeline situation on our hands," Mallory said. "I apologise for the secrecy but when something of this calibre occurs, information is on a need to know basis to preserve the timeline as far as we can."

"I think we need to know now, Mal."

The captain opened her desk drawer and took out a small, dirty metal disk. "I take it you recognise this, Gold?"

Closer inspection showed it to be a pocket-watch, rather worse for wear, the glass across its face cracked and its hands stopped. Sure, it had been through the wars a bit, but Lacey couldn't see anything special about it. Glancing over at Gold, she saw that his reaction was far more extreme. He'd gone very pale, and his hands were shaking as he reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and took out an identical - although clean and still ticking - pocket-watch.

"This is impossible," he muttered.

"You know what this means, of course."

Gold nodded, and Lacey raised her hand.

"Excuse the dumb time bandit in the corner, but what _does_ this mean?"

Gold placed the two watches on the desk and slid them across to Lacey. "The same object cannot exist twice in the same time. If it does, like this one does, it means a time loop has been created."

"Ok, even I know that time loops are bad news." Time was meant to move forward in a linear direction, but with all the travel backwards and forwards that went on, sometimes it managed to loop itself around. Lacey picked up the two watches, comparing them closely. The serial numbers on the back were the same; it was indeed the same object existing twice in the same time.

"Time loops are the Bureau's worst nightmare," Mallory said, her voice chillingly matter of fact. "Once we discover one, we have to make sure it follows through to its conclusion or else we end up with a separate timeline. So far, we have managed to avoid such a catastrophe and all our loops have been resolved with the minimum of disruption." She turned her piercing eyes on Lacey. "This is where you come in, Miss French." She took the damaged watch back, and Gold tucked his clean one back into his jacket.

"Before we get into that," Gold began, "would you mind telling me just how you ended up with my emergency time-out transport, which definitely looks like it's been used in an emergency?"

"It, and the person carrying it, who was not you, before you ask, we don't have two of you running around the Bureau, landed in my office approximately six real-time hours ago." Mallory carefully opened the shattered casing around the watch and pointed out the numbers below the twisted hands. "This is the date and place on which it was used."

The numbers just about managed to read 10,006 BCE, and some shaky co-ordinates.

Gold swore under his breath. "Bloody hell, Mal, that's the Fall of Atlantis."

Lacey's heart leaped to her mouth and began beating painfully there. Atlantis was time-locked legend, with most bandits not even believing that it existed. Lacey had wanted to get there and have a snoop around ever since she'd bartered for her first transport bracelet and begun her travels along the timeline, but it was the one place that she could never seem to land in. She'd almost given up hoping for it, and now Gold and Mallory were talking about it as if it was a perfectly normal, everyday place.

"Come with me." Mal stood and began to lead the way out of her office. "We don't know how much time we have before the loop becomes unstable. I already have the lockout crew working on a window to send you back to Atlantis, and you'll need to go as soon as it's open."

Overwhelmed with all the information that she'd been given over the last few minutes, as well as by the overarching knowledge that _she was going to Atlantis, every self-respecting time bandit's dream_ , Lacey followed on after the two detectives as they moved through the Bureau towards what revealed itself as the medical bay. They stopped outside a room where a young woman was lying comatose.

"The DNA daters have confirmed her identity as Princess Kida of Atlantis," Mallory said. "She arrived here via the emergency time-out six hours ago and told me that I needed to send you two back to the Fall to find her there as soon as I could. Apparently, the fate of the world is at stake. She couldn't say very much before she passed out from the time lag, but there was something about rescuing an artefact that was crucial to prevent the apocalypse."

Lacey gulped. Closing a time loop and stopping Armageddon. No pressure for a petty thief, then.


	3. Chapter 3

“Here. You look like you could use it."

"Yeah, well, it's not every day that you're going about your normal banditry business and then half an hour later you're being told you're off to the place you've always dreamed of visiting and by the way can you stop the end of the world whilst you're at it."

Lacey accepted the paper cup of coffee and took a sip, watching Gold as he sat down beside her. After seeing Kida, they'd gone straight back to the capsule bay, making ready to leave as soon as control let them know that their window was open.

"I don't suppose you've got something stronger?" Lacey asked.

Gold chuckled. "If we both get through this hairy adventure, I'll break out the good Scotch in my desk drawer."

Lacey toasted her coffee cup against his. "I'm holding you to that, you know."

"I wouldn't dream of anything else."

It was strange, sitting beside the woman who'd given him so much grief over the years. Something in the back of his mind was telling him that he ought to be rejoicing in finally having caught up with her after all this time, but he could feel no pleasure in it whatsoever, not when the circumstances were as they were.

Lacey leaned back against the wall, staring at the transport capsule that was now showing as fully charged and ready for another outing.

“What’s it like?” she asked presently.

“What’s what like?”

“Atlantis.”

Gold shrugged. “I’ve never been. When a place is time-locked, even we can’t go to it except in extenuating circumstances.”

“Huh.” Lacey’s smile was amused. “That surprises me. You always give the impression that you’ve been everywhere and know everything. I mean, sometimes you blend into the time period better than others, but none of us are complete chameleons. I guess I just thought that you guys get a free pass to go everywhere.”

“Not everywhere. We generally only go to the places that you lot go to. Since, theoretically, none of you should be going to Atlantis in the first place, I’ve never had reason to follow anyone there.”

He continued to watch her, trying to gauge what she was thinking, but if there was a person Gold had always considered unreadable, it was Lacey French. They’d met so many times over the course of the years that he liked to think he knew her, but in reality, she was still an enigma, and even though they were about to enter into this adventure together, he still didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her.

Still, as she had said before, a gesture of good will was in order, especially considering the place they were going to, and more importantly the time to which they were going. A distinct disadvantage to any mission to a time-locked time and place was that there was so little first-hand information from fellow agents about the local conditions. The Fall of Atlantis was not well-documented, and Kida had not yet recovered from her time lag to be able to give them any warnings about what they might face from her own experience. It was definitely going to be hairy, and despite her occupation and her wanted poster on the wall, Lacey was a civilian with no formal training in these matters. Gold absolutely did not want her to get hurt, or worse, on his watch; and that desire had nothing to do with wanting to see her brought to justice once it was all over.

“Give me your hand.”

Lacey looked down at his own hand as if he was offering her some kind of poisonous snake. “Why?”

“I’m going to take the cuff off.”

Lacey gave a huff of laughter and covered it with an awkward cough before giving him an incredulous look.

“Are you absolutely sure about that, Detective? I am, after all, a wanted criminal, however small fry I might be in the grander scheme of things, and as you said yourself on the journey back from Greece, I am under arrest.”

“Just let me take it off.”

Obediently, she held out her arm and Gold grabbed his keys.

“How do you know that I’m not just going to wink straight out of here?” she asked.

“I don’t. But I like to think that you care about the timeline enough not to want an alternate one to spring up out of Atlantis, so I think you’ll come along and close the time loop anyway. Besides, you just admitted that you’ve always wanted to see Atlantis, and this is the only way that you’re going to get there.”

There was also the fact that small personal transports like Lacey’s didn’t really work inside the headquarters building thanks to the interference of the much larger craft coming and going, but if she was really determined, she could make it out without causing utter catastrophe. And, of course, there was no telling what she might do once they’d got to Atlantis.

The cuff came off and Gold pocketed it. Lacey flexed her wrist, looking at the lights which had now burst back into life on her bracelet. They were flashing all colours of the rainbow and Lacey grimaced.

“Couldn’t jump even if I wanted to. It’s been glitching for a while. Probably ever since the time loop became known.” She paused. “There’s something else, though, isn’t there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you could have just as easily left the cuff on and then you wouldn’t have to worry about it. I know it’s more than just a gesture of trust, because we haven’t known each other long enough for that and considering the amount of times we’ve played cat and mouse, frankly, you’d be stupid to just blindly trust me like that as a show of friendship and camaraderie. No, there’s something else.”

Gold took out his pocket-watch. He really didn’t want to think about how it had ended up in Kida’s hands for her to come back to headquarters with it, but he knew that whatever it was that caused the change in ownership was about to happen very soon in his own personal future.

“All agents have one of these,” he says. “An emergency time-out that will pull you back to the nominal present no matter where or when you are. You don’t have one, so whatever goes on out there, you have no fallback except that.” He tapped her bracelet, which beeped in protest. “I want to make sure that no matter what happens, you can get out of Atlantis should you need to.”

Lacey looked down at his hand on her wrist, and Gold realised that he had been holding on without meaning to, quickly letting her go as if he’d been stung. Lacey just gave her soft little laugh again and smiled.

“You know, I think you’re a big softie on the inside, Detective. For all you play the hardened time cop who’s had it up to here with me, I think a small part of you really cares.”

“It’s nothing like that.” Gold felt himself bristle as Lacey’s words wriggled their way under his carefully constructed armour and began to prod at the delicate bits of him. “I just don’t want to have a preventable time-related demise on my hands. The paperwork would take me until the end of time to process. Literally.”

“All right. I believe you.” It was clear from her tone of voice that she didn’t believe him in the slightest, but Gold wasn’t prepared to argue the point yet.

Before anything further could be said on the matter, the radio in Gold’s capsule crackled into life.

_“Detective Gold, your window to Atlantis will be opening in ten real-time minutes. Please confirm your readiness.”_

Gold stood up, offering a hand to Lacey to pull her up. “We’re on.”

Lacey took the offered hand and gave him a little curtsey once she was vertical again. “Thank you, sir.”

They made their way back into the capsule together and Gold sat down at the control panel.

“You might want to strap in,” he said, indicating the seat beside him as he fastened his own harness. “Navigating through time windows can be tricky. It’s not like your normal simple hop from A to B.”

“I thought you said you’d never been to a time-locked place and time before.”

“I’ve never been to Atlantis before, but it’s not the only time-locked place and time. I’ve done two previous ones.”

“Oh yes? And where might they have been?”

Gold chuckled. “Ah, now, that’s classified information. If you don’t know where the time-locked parts of history are, then I’m not going to be the one to tell you.”

Lacey just scowled at him, but nonetheless strapped herself into her seat, watching with fascination as he programmed the capsule ready for their departure.

“Control, this is Detective Gold. We’re clear to go whenever you are.”

_“Detective Gold, your time window will last for twenty-four real-time hours and starts in five, four, three, two, one.”_

Gold hit the ignition, and the little craft whirred up into life. He settled his hands on the steering column, flexing his fingers. It was a while since he’d had to drive manually. Normally all you had to do was key in your time and your co-ordinates and the capsule did the rest. He’d be able to relax for a little while once they were safely into the window; it would take about half an hour to pass through it and then he’d have to take control once again for landing in Atlantis.

He really wasn’t looking forward to that part all that much. In order to keep the time loop as stable as possible, they were going back to as close a time as the emergency time-out had been used as they could, and they would land right in the middle of the Fall period. With Atlantis being time-locked as it was, there was very little information about precisely what had caused its destruction beyond ‘a very big wave’. That could mean next to anything.

Lacey remained silent as he concentrated on driving, but he could tell that she was entranced by the entire process. He wondered if she’d ever had any experience of capsule travel before he’d picked her up in Greece or if she’d always worked with just her bracelet. There was so little he knew about her, despite having known her for such a long time. With just the two of them like this, it felt like it ought to be the perfect time to ask, but at the same time, the magnitude of what they were about to do made it seem like small talk would be frivolous in the face of it.

Making it safely into the window, he sat back from the controls, rubbing his forehead. Ideally he would have liked a bit more time to prepare for this mission. Not only were they closing a time loop, they were potentially saving the world, and he had no idea how they were supposed to go about it. All he could do was hope that Kida would be able to tell them when they found her on their arrival. Of course, that might be easier said than done, as it would be the first time that they were meeting Kida. She would be as unprepared for them as they were for her.

Gold glanced over at Lacey, who was still watching all the instruments and control panels in the capsule. Although she had always exuded an air of confidence, even after he had brought her into HQ and she had met Mal, now she looked nervous.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “The Bureau’s handled worse scrapes than this. Like Mal said, we’ve successfully closed every time loop we’ve ever come across throughout the entire timeline.”

Lacey shook her head. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

She didn’t elaborate as to what she was worried about instead, and Gold felt it best not to pry. There was already enough to be concerned about.

The rest of the journey was spent mostly in silence, each of the travellers lost in their own thoughts about what was to come.


	4. Chapter 4

Atlantis was everything that Lacey could have dreamed of and so much more, all wrapped up in one horrific nightmare-shaped bow. When the capsule had touched down and Gold had deemed it safe to exit, she had run to the door and thrown it open, not at all concerned for what might be on the other side. This was her chance to see the place she had long since given up hope of ever knowing, and she was going to get her fill of it whilst she could, before the need to find Kida and prevent the apocalypse came upon them.

She stopped short in the doorway, gazing around her surroundings in wonder. They were parked up in a back street; the capsules always landed in quiet areas where no-one would notice their presence, but even so, she could still see the evidence of the richness and vastness of the Atlantean culture in the buildings around them. Thinking that this had all been here so many thousands of years before her own time, all these advancements that the rest of society had yet to make just sitting here in splendid, time-locked isolation, well, it boggled the mind.

From here she could see the marketplace in the distance, and she looked at the huge specimens of statuary that towered above them at the edges of the town. Everything looked as if it had come straight out of a story book. It was all so fantastical that it barely seemed real, and Lacey had to pinch herself for reassurance that yes, she was here, and this was Atlantis.

Above the city of her dreams, however, was the sky of her nightmares. It was blood red, casting an eerie glow over the flawless sandstone buildings all around. A flash of bright yellow lightning screamed across the sky as the dark clouds roiled as if they were alive. The roar of water was heavy in her ears, although there were no floods or tidal waves to be seen just yet.

“Here.” Gold came over to her, holding out a thick, dark cape. He was also swathed in one, and he indicated for her to leave the capsule so that he could lock it up and activate the cloaking. Not a cow this time, just a simple invisibility holograph. Lacey looked down at the cape in her hands. The air in Atlantis was stifling and humid; it felt wet as she moved through it. She still didn’t know whereabouts she was in the world, but she wouldn’t be at all surprised to find herself in the middle of the Amazon.

“We have very little knowledge of Atlantean modes of dress,” Gold continued, on seeing her reluctance to don the cape, “but I do happen to know for a fact that they do not wear polyester mini-skirts and backless shirts.”

Lacey sighed, rolled her eyes, and wrapped the cape around her shoulders, hurrying off after Gold as he made his way from the capsule into the centre of the city. She caught up to him, keeping her eyes peeled for Kida anywhere around. She couldn’t help wondering why she was here. Well, she knew why she was here, obviously, it was to close the time loop and prevent an alternate timeline growing from a paradox. She just didn’t know how exactly she was supposed to stop the end of the world.

Of course, all she had to do was look up at the sky, so red it might have been bleeding, to think that the world was about to end within the next few minutes. When Gold had said that they were going back to the fall, he had not been joking. Whatever catastrophic event ended with Atlantis at the bottom of the ocean, it was certainly imminent. She didn’t know whether the twenty-four hours of real time that control had given them equated to twenty-four hours before the place was destroyed or not. She didn’t really want to hang around to find out.

Still, this was not the end of the world. It was the end of the Atlanteans’ world, but not the end of the wider world. There were still a good twelve thousand years to go before anything like that would happen. For a brief, hopeful moment, she wondered if Kida’s message had been lost in translation and what she was actually talking about when she’d mentioned the world ending was in fact the end of Atlantis.

Lacey waved that thought away with a sad shrug. To save Atlantis would be to alter history entirely, and that would be worse than leaving a time loop unfulfilled. On the other hand, Kida probably wouldn’t know about the intricately interwoven laws of physics and time travel, so perhaps there was hope after all.

A beep from her wrist told her that her bracelet was back in action, and she glanced down at it to check that the lights were showing as they should, but she did not entertain the thought of bowing out now. As Gold had said, this was going to be her only opportunity to explore Atlantis, even if it was in a state of panic. As they moved purposefully down the main street, people were hurrying about from house to house, collecting possessions and herding relatives in all directions. There didn’t seem to be any decided notion of where to go or what to do, other than getting away from the horrible storm clouds coming from all directions.

Still, it was reassuring to know that she could get out if she could, and she looked across at Gold again. When she had told him earlier that she wasn’t worried about them being able to close the time loop, she had not elaborated on what it was she was actually worried about, mainly because she didn’t want to have to admit it to herself.

If Kida had come through to the nominal present with Gold’s emergency time-out, then that meant that Gold himself did not have it, and the idea of him being stuck here in Atlantis whilst it fell was simply unsupportable to her. There had to be another way, but Lacey could not think of any that did not involve sabotaging the timeline.

She didn’t even know why she was so worried about him. Just as he and his colleagues had complained – or joked, in some cases – that she had been the bane of his existence, so he had been the bane of hers, constantly on her tail throughout the many years of history she had been plying her trade in. No matter where she went, he always seemed to be able to catch up with her.

She realised with a jolt that it was because she’d miss him if he wasn’t always there, travelling along behind her and never quite catching her up. Over the years, she’d come to view them has having a very strange kind of, well, not friendship, but perhaps camaraderie. Her life would be so much easier without him, but it would also be bereft of some kind of meaning, and she didn’t want to find out what that would be like.

There was also the undeniable fact that ultimately, Gold was a good person. He was snarky, but then so was she, and they both gave as good as they got. When push came to shove, he was a cop and she was a criminal. He worked tirelessly to keep the timeline intact, and if it wasn’t for the people like him, then she wouldn’t have a line of work. It was only through Gold and the rest of the temporal detectives keeping the timeline in order that she was able to travel back and forth along it in the first place. Really, their professions were mutually beneficial to each other.

Lacey couldn’t think any further on the subject; Gold put out a hand to stop her and they ducked into a doorway as a huge peal of thunder crashed overhead, the stark golden lightning blinding them momentarily.

“We’d better find Kida soon or there won’t be anywhere left to search,” she muttered. The lightning flashed again, and once there were no longer spots dancing in front of her eyes, Lacey had to look out from her hiding place and marvel in awe at the sheer power of the nature around her. The bolt had struck the tallest sandstone tower, which was now billowing plumes of black smoke which danced in the ruby clouds.

Although, that said, she really didn’t know how natural this storm was. She’d never seen anything like it in all her travels, and as slates began to fall from the burning roof, she felt a shiver of fear. The danger of their situation was absolutely not lost on her, and she turned to Gold. She didn’t know if she was expecting reassurance, but she knew that there was none to be found in his face. What there was, however, despite his frightened eyes, was determination. There was going to be no point in suggesting that they cut their losses and hoofed it back to the capsule, the timeline and the time loop be damned.

“I think that’s the royal palace,” Gold said, his voice grim as he nodded towards the burning tower. “If Kida’s going to be anywhere, then it’s likely she’ll be there.”

As counterintuitive as it was to be running towards a burning building, Lacey nevertheless followed Gold as he dashed across the road, weaving in and out of fleeing Atlanteans, and began to pick his way through the back streets towards the tower. For a man who’d never been to the city before, he certainly had a very good idea of navigating it.

It was tough going; everyone else in the city was running in the opposite direction to them, and they were on the receiving end of many incredulous looks and shouts as they continued to go towards the danger. Gold’s hand grabbed Lacey’s, and she was grateful not to be lost in all the turmoil. Once they were finally out of the melee of the main city and had reached the winding steps that led to the base of the still-smoking tower, he looked back at her and gave a tight, nervous smile that did nothing to reassure her. She squeezed his hand, but he didn’t let go, and she didn’t want him to.

As he turned back towards the tower, he stiffened, suddenly alert.

“Jackpot.” He indicated the top of the steps and the grand door into the tower. Kida was there; even from their distance away she was still recognisable as the woman in the coma back at the BTI headquarters. She was with an older man, whose grand attire was certainly befitting of royalty; probably the king. The man was trying to tug her down the steps, and Kida was protesting, wanting to go back inside, much to the despair of the guards who were attempting to bolt the doors.

Lacey didn’t know why they were taking such security precautions when everyone was evacuating the city, but then she remembered some of her own escapades in other dangerous times, ducking in and out of abandoned houses during air raids in the blitz. Even if the city was on the verge of destruction, there would still be some opportunists about. She was a case in point, and a none-too-small part of her mind was wondering just what treasures might be behind those doors and just want kind of a price she could ask for them. They’d probably set her up for life just for dint of being from Atlantis; she’d be able to hawk a simple chunk of brick from the crumbling masonry for millions.

The king succeeded in getting Kida to come with him, and the guards bolted the doors before following them down the steps. Kida, visibly chagrined by her locking out, ran on ahead, and with the two guards preoccupied with helping the elderly king down the steps, Lacey decided that it was time to make a move. There was probably protocol for this kind of thing and she could hear Gold’s frantic hiss of ‘Lacey, what are you doing?’ as she pulled her hand out of his grasp and darted out into Kida’s path.

“I can help you get back inside,” she said. At last, in that moment, she knew her purpose on this mission, and she knew that it went beyond simply closing the time loop. All of her years sneaking into places to steal things had given her a certain skill set.

Kida just looked at her with an expression of equal parts confusion, disbelief, and mistrust.

“You wanted to go back in,” Lacey pressed. Gold had come up alongside her, and she knew that they must both look a sight, swathed in their dark cloaks, which were at complete odds with the pale-coloured garb of the Atlanteans. Lacey was beginning to think that she’d have been better off with the mini skirt after all. “There must be something very important inside if it’s worth going back in during this.” She gestured to the general apocalyptic atmosphere around them.

Kida gave a curt nod. “The library,” she said. “I need to get back into the library.”

Lacey’s heart leapt to her mouth and beat there painfully. If there was one thing that she had always held the proper respect and reverence for, perhaps too much respect and reverence considering the amount of scrapes she got in because of it, it was literature. If Atlantis’s entire literary culture was about to be wiped out, then anything she could salvage would be worth the risk. Not to sell, never to sell, but to add to her personal collection

“What are we waiting for, then?” she said. “Let’s get back in that library.”


	5. Chapter 5

They ducked back into the darkened doorway that Gold and Lacey had been hiding in so that Lacey could make her plan for their entry into the locked tower. Gold knew that this was her area of expertise and he accepted that there was nothing he could add to the plan at this stage, and that if Lacey wanted his help, she’d ask for it.

Actually, he wasn’t so sure about that last one. Lacey had always been a lone wolf; he’d never known her to have any kind of back-up or assistance on any of her commissions. Was that out of a desire to keep potential double-crossers out of the loop and remain as autonomous as possible, or did she simply not have anyone? Would she fight to maintain her independence whilst she was partnered with him on this mission? Would she realise that he was able and willing to help her if she needed it? Would she even want to ask for help?

He forced himself to stop thinking about Lacey; she was distracting him from the task at hand. Now that they had found Kida, the time loop was well and truly in motion and there was nothing more they could do except follow it through to the end – and hope that the end had both him and Lacey back safely in the nominal present. Well, Lacey at least. Gold was gradually coming to terms with the nauseating realisation that he might not make it out of Atlantis alive.

Gold glanced over at Kida, whose eyes were darting between the steadily burning tower and Lacey’s crouched form. She was definitely the same woman from headquarters, and Gold was a little wrong-footed. He had expected her to be both harder to find and harder to convince of their benignity. As it was, she had taken Lacey’s appearance out of nowhere in her stride and accepted the complete lack of explanations that had come with the offer of assistance.

“You’re very trusting,” he remarked presently. It could be, of course, that there was some deeper time play at work here and there was a reason why Kida was so calm in their presence. They could have miscalculated completely; perhaps she had in fact already met them in some other time.

“Yes?” Kida turned to him, politely enquiring.

“You’ve never met us before, we’re very obviously not from these parts, and you accept Lacey’s offer to help you back into a dangerous building with no questions asked. You have no idea what our intentions might be.”

Kida’s gaze was cool and logical, and Gold immediately knew that she’d thought this over far more than he’d given her credit for.

“The city is crumbling around us and our ships will not get everyone out in time,” she said, completely matter of fact but with steel behind her words. “There’s going to be a lot of death tonight. If you have nefarious intentions then so be it. Atlantis is falling anyway, and our culture will die with it. I’m not afraid of you two or what you might or might not have in store for me. I’m far more worried about the future and preventing something catastrophic happening in it.”

Gold thought of Mal’s words, telling him that Kida had talked about the apocalypse when she had come through to the present.

“I need help to get back inside,” Kida continued. “If you two can help me get there, then all will not be lost. If something happens to prevent me, then all is lost, and I will rest easily knowing that at least I tried.”

She was so stoic and pragmatic in the face of oncoming doom that Gold was rather alarmed by her.

Presently Lacey stood up.

“Ready to move?” she asked. “I’ve got a plan. And how are we going to stop the apocalypse by saving a library? Believe me, if I could have saved the entirety of Alexandria I would have done.”

They left their cover, skirting through the side streets to get around to the back of the tower.”

“It’s not the whole library,” Kida said. “It’s just one book. Not even a book; just a scroll.”

“A very important scroll for you to risk your life going back to get it,” Gold pointed out.

“It predicts the end of the wider world.” So much for Gold’s feeble hope that the apocalypse that Kida had talked about was only referring to the fall of Atlantis itself. “And more importantly, how to prevent it.”

“Surely your father would have understood the need to protect such a document.”

They’d reached the back of the tower and Gold bent to give Lacey a leg up onto a high windowsill. Strange how they seemed to be so in tune with each other when they’d only been working on the same side for a few hours.

“The prophecy doesn’t mention Atlantis,” Kida explained as Lacey set about working her magic on the window. The princess looked around at the boiling sky and the lightning overhead. More buildings around them were beginning to burn. “Now I’m almost sure why it isn’t mentioned. I highly doubt any of it is going to be around in the future. We’re an isolationist country; my father doesn’t care what happens in the wider world as long as Atlantis isn’t involved.”

Lacey opened the window and slipped into the darkened room beyond. This was it. This was the ultimate test of her loyalties. If she went off treasure-hunting by herself instead of helping them, then she would have failed in his estimations and everyone would be fully justified in saying ‘I told you so’ when he got back to headquarters. If he got back to headquarters. The possibility of that was looking slimmer by the second. He didn’t know why he would be so disappointed if Lacey proved untrustworthy. She was a thief after all. She’d never given him any reason to trust her.

All the same…

A rope of thick blue velvet swung out of the window.

“I’ll pay for the curtain damage,” Lacey’s voice called. Kida wasted no time in shimmying up the rope and Gold followed her. The room they landed in was already beginning to fill with white smoke.

“Lead the way, your highness.” Lacey was breathing through a handkerchief and Gold took one out of his pocket too. Thankfully, Kida led them out of the room and down, away from the fire and falling masonry, running down so many steps that they might as well have been going down into the centre of the earth.

“Who are you, anyway?” Kida asked over her shoulder as they ran on.

“I thought you didn’t care as long as we got you back inside,” Gold replied. “Besides, you wouldn’t believe us if we told you.”

“Well, we’re inside now, and I’m interested, and you wouldn’t lie when we might all get crushed under this building at any moment, would you?”

Gold had to agree with her there. Mortal peril did bring out one’s more truthful side.

“We’re from the future,” he said. “Roughly twelve thousand years from now.”

“In that case, it’s even more imperative that we find that scroll,” Kida said.

“Not necessarily. The apocalypse might still be in our own future.”

“I know that,” Kida said sharply. “But why else would you come back to this place and this moment if not to solve a problem threatening your own time? Since this text is the only one pertaining to the future of the wider world that we have, we need to find it.”

She had another good point, but before Gold could acknowledge it properly, the ground beneath their feet gave a shuddering and impossibly lurch, throwing them all off their feet as the stones above them screamed with the pressure. Gold did not want to think about just how far down they had come, and how much building was now above them.

Kida was the first back on her feet, and Gold accepted Lacey’s hand up off the floor, brushing himself down. 

“I hate to say it, but that really didn’t sound healthy.” Lacey looked around at the walls. The horrific screech was still ringing in Gold’s ears, and as he followed Lacey’s sight line, he saw the hairline cracks making their way down the stone. The entire structure was about to crumble around them. 

“We’ll be fine,” Kida said, taking off on light feet down the corridor again. “The city’s withstood earth tremors before.” Although Gold couldn’t say that he really shared her confidence, he accepted that keeping moving was a better idea than standing in the corridor like a lemon waiting for masonry to fall on his head. As they ran after Kida, he realised that Lacey was still holding his hand and that he had no desire to pull himself free. He’d already tasked himself with keeping her safe during this precarious mission, and if that involved being attached to her, then so be it. He didn’t really mind. Her hand was warm and dry in his, no trace of nervous sweat. In a way he supposed it made sense; Lacey had always lived her life on the edge. Whilst running around a collapsing building in the middle of a collapsing city probably didn’t happen to her every day, she had wriggled her way out of enough scrapes in the past.

When she glanced over her shoulder at him, however, he could tell from her wide eyes that she was just as scared by their situation as he was, only she was hiding it from Kida slightly better. 

They came to the end of the corridor and the ornate doors that separated them from the library. The heavy wood had warped horribly with the earthquake into something twisted and grotesque that certainly would not let them through. Kida’s stark optimism that she’d held earlier visibly wilted as her hopes of getting inside the library seemed dashed before her eyes.

Lacey dropped Gold’s hand, staring up at the doors with an air of utmost determination. 

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” she said, with a painfully false brightness. Quite how she was going to get in was anybody’s guess, but Gold had certainly seen Lacey get into and out of some tight spots before. She placed her hands on the wood, feeling around for the weak points. 

“I think if I can climb up a little way, I should be able to get in nearer the top.” She paused, then jumped back from the doors as if she had been stung. “It’s shaking again, I can feel it.”

Gold couldn’t feel anything at first, but then the rumbling beneath his feet grew undeniable, and he startled out of the way as dust and stone chips began to rain down from the high vaulted ceiling. The tremor was over as soon as it had begun, although Gold wasn’t convinced that they were entirely out of danger just yet. 

“Well, amazing as it might sound, that actually helped us.” Lacey had returned to studying the doors. The tremor had warped them further and there was a small gap halfway up. Gold wasn’t even sure if she would fit through it, but anything was better than nothing, and she began to scamper up the twisted wood. 

“What am I looking for?” she asked Kida.

“A scroll in a blue and white fabric cover, about so big.” Kida held out her hands about a foot apart. “It should be on a shelf at the far end of the room on the third level. Gold tassels at both ends. I don’t suppose either of you read Atlantean, but its title is ‘Future of the Wider Cosmos’.”

“It’s close enough to ancient Icelandic runes, I should be ok.”

Another rumble began underfoot, and Lacey jumped down from her precarious position on the doors until it had passed. This one lasted far longer than the previous one had done, and the dust was accompanied by the ear-splitting scrape of rock shearing in two. 

“Watch out!”

The ceiling began to fall in huge tumbling chunks; Gold grabbed Lacey and pressed her in close against the wall out of danger, but Kida was too far away. Lacey’s eyes were screwed up tight, and any pretensions Gold might have held that she wasn’t scared were completely thrown away. 

By the time the roaring noise stopped, the corridor beyond them was almost totally blocked by stones. 

“Kida?” Gold called nervously. If she was under those stones, then the consequences for the timeline would be catastrophic. 

“I’m all right.” Her voice came from the other side of the fallen stones, and a moment later, her face appeared through a small gap. She was bleeding from a cut just above her ear, but other than that she seemed unhurt, just shaken. “I got clear just in time.” She looked around. “I don’t think I’ll be able to climb over this; it’s pretty sheer on this side.” 

Gold took a deep breath. It was time. There was nothing to be gained from Kida staying here any longer, trapped in the crumbling tower with them. They knew what she was looking for, and she’d not had it with her when she arrived in Mal’s office. They were on their own with the library, and now Kida needed to go through to the future and close the time loop before she ended up squashed under the weight of the tower. 

He slipped his hand into his pocket and drew out his emergency time-out, coated in dust from the destruction in the air all around them, and pushed it through the gap. 

“Take this,” he said. “Get clear of the rocks, then press down the catch on the top.”

“What is it?” Kida took the time-out, looking at it in fear. 

“It’ll get you out of here,” Gold explained. “There’s nothing more you can do here; Lacey and I will find the scroll and follow you out. It’ll take too much time to get you through this barrier and into the library with us. The building is unstable enough as it is.”

Kida nodded. “Where will it take me?”

“The future.” Her eyes widened. “It’ll take you to the place where Lacey and I came from. When you arrive, the first person you meet should be Captain Mallory. You need to tell her to send me and Lacey back here to help you. That’s important, that needs to be the first thing you say.”

“I don’t know your name,” Kida pointed out. 

“It’s Gold. Aiden Gold. Captain Mallory needs to send Aiden Gold and Lacey French back to this time.”

Kida nodded her understanding and stepped away from the rocks. She pressed down on the catch, and a moment later, she was gone. 

Gold let out a long breath of relief. Whatever happened now, they had closed the time loop. The entire continuity of everything was no longer in danger. 

He and Lacey, however, were in very real personal danger, and they still had a job to do. 

He turned back to Lacey; the doors were now warped enough that they would both be able to get through the gap between them. 

Lacey gave a nod, and Gold followed her into the darkness beyond, unsure what they might find in its depths. 

Hopefully, it would be a scroll with the key to preventing the future apocalypse.


	6. Chapter 6

Gold didn’t know why he had been expecting the library to look like a normal library. Well, no, that wasn’t what he had been expecting. He’d been perfectly prepared for it to look like a very strange library, since they were, after all, in a very strange place.

What he had not been expecting was for the library to be showing the same level of devastation that the rest of the tower had been reduced to. For some reason, his mind had decided that the heavy doors had protected the room beyond, and that they would be entering into an untouched and perfectly traversable space.

Naturally, this was not the case. The library was just as wrecked as the corridor beyond had been, and Gold didn’t think that Kida’s instructions for finding the scroll were going to be as useful as he’d hoped.

The library was several floors in height, well, depth; they had entered on the topmost floor and it sank down beneath them. It was a perfectly cylindrical room, a spiral staircase – now warped and mangle beyond all recognition – twisting down in the centre.

If the general devastation wasn’t enough, Gold immediately spotted another problem. Kida had said that the scroll was on the far side of the room on the third level – but was that the third level from the top or the bottom?

He looked over at Lacey, who was eyeing the damage with a similar disheartened expression to the one that he was no doubt wearing himself. He saw the moment that she steeled herself, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders.

“I’ll take the lower third level,” she said, moving away towards the staircase, and before Gold could protest, she was climbing nimbly over the structure in a way that he knew he could never have managed. Her thievery skills were coming to the fore once again, and he had to say that he was glad of them.

There was another ominous rumble and the floor shook gently beneath Gold’s feet as a shower of dust came down from the ceiling. There was no time to get caught up on watching Lacey’s gymnastics as she swung herself onto the lower third level. He began to make his way down to the upper third, picking his way through the fallen bookcases. Two racks were leaning against each other precariously, the occasional tome dropping out of the shelves to land on the tiled floor with an inordinately loud smack. Gold winced at the sound, and although aware that time was of the essence, his pace slowed to a snail’s crawl as he made his way down under the arch created by the shelving, hyperaware that it could fall and crush him at any moment.

The scrolls were housed at the far end, just as Kida had said they would be, although trying to find the correct one would be easier said than done. The cabinet that housed them, no doubt once beautiful stained glass, was now a snowstorm of coloured shards surrounding miles of unrolling papyrus. Gold dusted the worst of the glass off them, hissing with pain as the microscopic splinters drew blood. So far as he could see, none of the scrolls had the tassels that Kida had described, but then, they were all half falling out of their covers. Even in their dire circumstances, it still made a lump come to Gold’s throat to know that all of this beauty and craftsmanship would be lost forever within just a few hours.

“Gold!”

Lacey’s shout had him ignoring his previous trepidation and sprinting back down the length of the shelves, looking down over the railing.

“I’ve got it!” she yelled, leaning out over her own railing two floors below him and waving a scroll. “It’s right here, ‘Future of the Wider Cosmos’, just like Kida said. Bit battered, but still in one piece.”

Gold heaved a huge sigh of relief.

“All right. Let’s get out of here and get back to the capsule before this place falls down around our ears.”

They both made their way towards the central staircase, but as he stepped onto the wrought iron, Gold knew, with a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach, that he had spoken too soon.

He felt himself falling even before the staircase gave out completely underneath him, throwing him off like a bucking horse and giving him no chance to grab any kind of foothold. He was falling through emptiness, straight down towards a very hard, very stone floor.

The sound was sickening, and even more so because it had been his bones that had made it.

The pain in his chest and legs and radiating out from the back of his skull was so intense that it consumed everything else, black spots dancing in front of his vision as the world creaked and swam around him. Suddenly, nothing else mattered except the fact that every nerve in his body felt like it was on fire. He had never felt anything like it. The only overarching thought that he could even begin to comprehend was the terrible desire for it all to be over, for him to feel nothing at all instead of all this searing pain.

“Gold!”

Lacey’s voice seemed incredibly far away, as if she were calling to him from the other side of the world. Nevertheless, it managed to penetrate the thick fog of pain that had closed in on him, a sharp siren call reminding him that he was not the only one in this godforsaken plight, and no matter what, he had to make sure that she was all right. She had the scroll; she had to get back to the future and whatever was waiting for her there. She had to be all right. He couldn’t let her die here with him.

If this was where he was destined to end, then so be it, but he could not take Lacey with him. Not when there was so much more of time and history left for her to explore.

He forced himself to open his eyes, the black spots dancing in front of them ever more violently now. He could see her hanging onto the staircase, leaning out as far as she dared, peering down at him from her precarious perch. He saw her begin to climb down towards him, agile as a monkey and graceful as a ballerina.

“No! Lacey!”

There was no voice behind his words, or if there was, then he couldn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears. She was showing no signs of stopping, and the entire place might collapse at any moment. He had to try again. Gold lifted his head off the stone, gritting his teeth against the dizzy, swooping sensation and swallowing back the waves of nausea that the pain was forcing on him.

“Lacey!”

This time she heard him, and she stopped her descent.

“Lacey, get out! You have to get out!”

“I’m not leaving you behind!”

“You have to! The entire future depends on you!”

She looked at her bracelet. It would blink her out of here in a split second, if only she would just use it. She couldn’t take him with her, it would only transport one. Even if she reached him safely, she would have to get him back to the capsule in order for them both to leave, and by then, the place would most definitely have collapsed around them and the future would be lost along with them.

He didn’t hear her words, but he could see her lips move.

_I’m so sorry._

She touched her bracelet and shimmered out of sight, and Gold closed his eyes, focussing on the pain. It was all right. Everything would be all right now. Lacey was out, that was all that mattered. The Bureau would be able to fix everything from there.

Above him, he felt a sudden rush of air. The ceiling must have caved in completely. Something in the back of his mind, still rational despite the pain, told him that it couldn’t have been the ceiling, because he would have heard it fall and would be buried under a pile of rubble. Perhaps he was, perhaps he was dead already and just hadn’t felt it.

Surely he wouldn’t still be in so much pain if he was dead, though.

“Gold!”

He forced his eyes open again, because that was Lacey’s voice, back again, and so much closer than before.

He couldn’t see much. Oblivion was taking over his vision, everything a greyish haze beyond.

Gold thought he could make out the shape of his capsule crash-landed in the library debris, Lacey scurrying towards him, and he knew that the pain must have made him delirious.

Then there was nothing.

X

Gold opened his eyes to a white ceiling that quickly familiarised itself as the Bureau Headquarters infirmary. It hadn’t been a dream, then. Lacey really had crashed his capsule into the Atlantean library to come and rescue him. Or maybe it had been a dream and he’d made it back to HQ some other way. A small part of his fuzzy memory could have sworn blind he’d heard Jefferson’s voice during those last few moments before he drifted off.

He took a few moments to take stock of the situation. His head was killing him, and his right ankle wasn’t doing much better, but he was alive and back in the nominal present, so it was a small price to pay.

Gold looked over to his right and a familiar face swam into view. Kida was sitting on the bed next to him, hooked up to a drip but otherwise recovered from the state she’d been in when they’d left her in the infirmary to go and close the time loop. She smiled when she saw him awake.

“Hello, Mr Gold.”

“Hello.” His voice was dry and croaky, and he wondered how long he’d been out for. Deciding that it was too much effort to try and form entire sentences, he rasped out a single word and hoped it would convey his meaning adequately.

“Lacey?”

Kida pointed across his bed and Gold turned with a complaining head to see Lacey curled up in the uncomfortable chair beside the bed, fast asleep. Tilly was tucking a blanket in around her.

“Morning, Mr G.” Tilly grinned. “You gave us quite the fright there, you know.” She finished with the blanket and pulled some dead petals off the flowers on the bedside table. “You were out for two days. She’s barely left your side. I think I might have a rival for my affections.”

Gold rolled his eyes. “You’ve got Margot.”

“I know, but there’ll always be a special place in my heart for the team’s grumpy uncle.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “It’s good to have you back.”

Gold watched her leave the room and a few moments later, the doctor arrived to check on Gold’s miraculous recovery.

“It’s not often someone survives having a library collapse on top of them,” Whale observed. Gold said nothing, just looking over at Lacey as she began to stir. If it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have survived. He’d told her to go and to get to safety whilst she could, and when he had seen her wink out, he had fully expected never to see her again. But she’d risked life and limb to come back for him, piloting a capsule she’d never flown before to boot.

Lacey finally managed to extricate herself from Tilly’s expert blanket wrapping as the doctor left, and she gave Gold a tired smile.

“Hey,” he croaked.

“Hey yourself, Detective.”

“You drove.”

“What?”

“Capsule.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, it’s like you said. It’s just like driving a car once you know what you’re doing. The controls are pretty intuitive, and Jefferson and Tilly were giving me instructions.”

Not quite sure what to make of that, Gold just raised an eyebrow. Lacey sighed.

“When I left you, I winked five minutes into the past back to the capsule. I managed to find the radio and get through to HQ and get through to Jefferson – it took a heck of a lot of convincing to get Control to patch me through to him, let me tell you – and he walked me through flying the capsule. Tilly offered helpful comments and translated all the cop speak into layman’s terms.”

“Why?”

“You lot have a language all to yourselves; you’re completely incomprehensible half of the time. It would be like you coming to one of my meets and trying to understand bandit argot. I needed it in plain English.”

Not having enough energy or brainpower to say ‘I didn’t mean why was Tilly translating’, Gold just rolled his eyes. Lacey grinned.

“I know, I know. I’m just kidding with you, Detective. You can’t say you didn’t miss me being absolutely infuriating whilst we were working together.”

“Wanna bet?” Gold wished that he sounded more vehement and not like he would have trouble going up against a marshmallow.

The grin gradually faded from Lacey’s face and she became sober once more.

“I couldn’t leave you there. You trusted me to help you on this mission. I couldn’t leave you to die alone in a crumbling library thousands of years and miles from your own time after that. I just couldn’t.” She smiled again, but it was a weak one, and there was no conviction in her words when she spoke again. “I mean, who else is going to chase me around through time and space if you’re not there to do it? I’d get so bored and lonely.”

Gold just looked at her, knowing that she didn’t mean any of what she was saying, and knowing that, right now, there was nothing that he could do to make her admit it, nor did he want to, because that would mean admitting certain feelings of his own that he wasn’t quite ready to confront yet.

Lacey cleared her throat, looking away, and assuming a neutral, professional mask when she did look at him again.

“Mal’s got Tilly and Margot working on the scroll to stop the end of the world. Kida’s going to help them once she’s out of the infirmary.”

Gold glanced over at Kida, who nodded. He wondered what would become of her now that she was so completely displaced from her own time. She couldn’t go back; there was nowhere for her to go back to, and it would be a terrible thing indeed to send her to her own time simply for her to die. Since there were no records of what had happened to any of the Atlanteans after the fall, there was no reason why she could not stay here in the nominal present and live out the rest of her life. It would be a shock to her, certainly, uprooted from her home and family and knowing that she alone survived, without a home to return to. He hoped that she would be ok. Tilly and Mal would look after her. It would not be the first time that they had seen people pulled from their own time streams irrevocably, but it was the first time that Gold had ever been the one to orchestrate such a thing.

He looked back at Lacey and wondered what she would do now. Would she just slip away, back to the life of crime she’d always led, only to cross his path at undetermined intervals when she came onto his radar?

Would there be anything he could do or say to make her stay?

She gave him a soft smile, reaching out to take his hand.

“I’m so glad you’re ok,” she whispered. “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you.”

Gold didn’t know what he would have done if he had lost her, either.

“Stay?” he rasped. “Please?”

Lacey leaned in to kiss his forehead. “I’m not going anywhere, Detective.”

Despite the wooziness settling into his head again, Gold knew that she meant it, and he let sleep take him again, safe in the knowledge that Lacey would still be there when he woke up.

Only time could tell where they would go from here, but despite everything, Gold found that he was quite looking forward whatever unknowns the future might hold, as long as he had Lacey by his side.


End file.
